This nickname was acquired a few weekends ago when I took a two-day class in energy healing. I’d heard of this energy healing stuff before, but hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. Upon an invitation from a friend who was serving as one of the instructors, I decided to give it a try.

Bright and early on a Saturday morning, I was joined by ten other students. We first took a HIPAA-esque vow to maintain confidentiality about what would happen that weekend. While the experiences of the others in the training are respected as personal and private, I can still speak freely of my own experience, which I’m deeply thankful for. It was too profound not to share.

I confess, among my fellow classmates, I was the biggest skeptic and had done the least amount of personal research on energy healing prior to the class. Not only did I feel the disconnect internally; I visibly stuck out like a sore thumb in my Hard Rock Café Boston Tshirt and jeans. My earthy classmates, in their batik clothing and crystal jewelry, embraced me as one of their own and committed to helping enlighten me throughout the weekend. They surrounded me with what I came to understand was loving intention – the pure, simple desire to give love or healing, whichever was needed. Loving intention, as we all came to learn, turned out to be the key ingredient in energy healing.

We spent much of the first day doing hands-on exercises that showed us that yes, we truly do have energy flowing through us. We experienced for ourselves the phenomenon that not only can energy be passed on through touch, but can be tangibly felt within ourselves and among each other.

I was the last person to expect to feel anything. But while hovering my hand over a classmate’s spinal column in an effort to sense energy, I felt a pronounced tingling in the middle finger of my left hand. When I shared it with him, he smiled knowingly. “I sent that to you,” he said with loving intention. “Prior to this class, I read about a shaman who could feel energy in his middle finger. I gave that to you as a gift, to help you.”

A short while later during a group meditation, one of our instructors strummed a crystal bowl. It made loud, intense vibrations that we could literally feel throughout our bodies. We were guided through a meditation in which we were to clear our minds and wait for messages, inspirations or visions. I didn’t think any would come to me until we were asked to place our hands over our hearts. When my left hand went to my chest, I felt something again.

BAM!

The instant my middle finger came into contact with my skin, I felt a zap like a lightning bolt. My mind went immediately to the episode of Family Guy in which Peter Griffin, in footed flannel pajamas, drags his feet across the carpet and touches daughter Meg to shock her. I didn’t know if this counted as my first official vision or not, but I literally did a full-body jolt and came back down to a resting position to find my heart pounding beneath my fingertips.

Energy.

Energy!

This was real. I could feel it! Oh boy, could I feel it. In a debrief after the meditation, I shared this experience with my fellow classmates. I was giddy with laughter as I spoke about my sparky middle finger.

“Your little finger?” One of my instructors asked.

“My middle finger,” I clarified.

“The bird finger,” one of my classmates added. We all laughed. My left middle digit was henceforth known was as Sparky the Bird throughout the rest of the weekend.

Sunday evening, I went home to an empty house, where I was able to relax and reflect back on what I’d experienced. The sensation of solitude didn’t last very long, though. I knew I was alone, but for some odd reason, didn’t feel lonely. Perhaps I owed it to a newly awakened, aware part of me, but I felt other presences in the living room.

I zeroed in on the egg incubator – a little experiment underway at home. We’d collected a dozen chicken eggs from a farm a couple of weeks prior and had placed them in the miniature chicken NICU in the living room. Incubating eggs into chickens actually takes quite a bit of science and effort to replicate what a mother hen would do. Temperature and humidity levels must be just right. The eggs must be turned a certain number of times a day, otherwise the chickens could hatch deformed, or not at all.

Considering how fragile those little lives were, I figured a little love couldn’t hurt. Approaching the incubator, I cleared my mind and recalled the fundamentals I’d just learned. Move your ego out of the way, we’d been taught, and give the energy back to the universe. Let it do the work. It will go where it is needed. I held my hands over the eggs and waited. It didn’t take long before the middle finger of my left hand tingled. I waited until it stopped, assuming that the energy had found its way to where it had needed to go. My work was done.

Another couple of weeks passed, and the projected hatch date – although I knew it was a conservative guess – came and went. There was a funky smell surrounding the incubator. I was nervous that something had gone wrong and the incubation of the eggs hadn’t been successful. More than that, I wondered if my sparky middle finger had somehow failed the unborn babies. Had there not been enough energy? Had it been too much? Or per the doubting voice in the back of my mind, was the tingly, sensitive finger and the transfer of energy all just a figment of my imagination? The days continued to pass, and I was losing hope. Until one night, a tiny, almost inaudible sound came from inside the incubator.

Peep peep!

From inside one of the eggs, someone was talking to us, letting us know that it was alive and well. The first egg hatched the following morning and peep number one came into the world. The following day, another peep arrived. The day after that, three more joined them.

Gone is the incubator and the seven eggs that didn’t make it, replaced by a hutch and a heat lamp to keep the five new babies warm. It’s amazing to see how quickly they’re growing. Sometimes I leave in the morning and return home later in the day to see that they’re just a little bit bigger. We humans interact with them a lot so they won’t be fearful of people. As I’m coming or going, I talk to them and they chirp back. I also pick them up and hold each of them for just a little while every day.

And sometimes while I’m doing it, the middle finger of my left hand starts to tingle. I know that something wonderful is happening. Even though I’m not purposely focusing on giving love or energy through my touch, I can feel it anyway. Maybe it’s happening because they’re giving it back to me.

Loving intention.

It’s a beautiful thing. I’m convinced it makes a difference.

So I try now, as best I can, to be a vessel for sending energy back out into the world to go where it is needed.

With loving intention, I give the universe the bird.

And the universe – in its own precious way – has given me back a few little birds of my own.